38 THE PARKS AND GAHDENS OF PARIS. [Chap. II. 



the best results are abunclaut, and yet the scene fails to satisfy 

 the eye, from the needless formality of many of the beds, pro- 

 duced by the heaping together of a great number of species of one 

 kind in long, straight or twisting beds with high raised edges 

 frequently of hard-beaten soil. Too many such examples are 

 found. The formality of the true geometrical garden is charming 

 to many to w'hom this style is offensive ; and there is not the 

 slightest reason w^hy the most beautiful combinations of fine- 

 leaved and fine-flowered plants should not be made in any kind 

 of geometrical garden. 



But in the purely picturesque garden it is as needless as it is 

 false in taste to follow the course here objected to. Hardy 

 plants may be isolated on the turf, and may be arranged in 

 beautiful irregular groups, with the turf or some graceful spray 

 of hardy trailing plants for a carpet. Flower-beds may be 

 readily placed so that no objectionable stage-like results will be 

 seen : tender plants may be grouped as freely as may be desired — 

 a formal edge avoided by the turf being allowed to play irregu- 

 larly under and along the margins, while the remaining hare 

 ground beneath the tall plants may be quickly covered with some 

 fast-growing low plants. Choice tender specimens of Tree-ferns, 

 etc., placed in dark shady dells, may be plunged to the rims of 

 the pots in the turf or earth, and some graceful or bold trailing 

 herb placed round the cavity so as to conceal it ; and in these 

 and various ways we may have every loveliness of the plant 

 world free from all geometry. The day will come when we shall 

 be as anxious to avoid all formal twirlings in our gardens as we 

 now are to have such twistings i)erpetrated by landscape-gardeners 

 of great repute for aj)plying wall-j)aper or fire-shovel patterns to 

 the surface of the reluctant earth, and w^hen we shall cease to 

 tolerate in our gardens such scenes as no landscape-artist would 

 endure in a sketch. 



The old landscape-gardening dogma,* which tells us we cannot 



* " In gardening, tlic materials of the scene are few, and those few unwieldy, 

 and the artist must often content himself with the reflection that he has given the 

 best disjjosition in his i)ower to the scanty and intractable materials of nature." 

 — Ai.LisoN. (This is only one of many statements, equally untrue, made by 

 jjersons who had no idea of the extent of the plant world.) 



